Note: A club's "sweet spot" marks the middle of the club face -- the ideal place to hit the ball.
Woods
Woods have the largest heads of any golf club. These large clubs are designed to send the ball 300 yards or more with a single swing. What is it about the bulbous shape of the wood that suits it for these long-distance strikes? The answer has to do with the wood's shaft, especially in the largest wood, called the driver. Wood shafts are considerably longer than the shafts of most other clubs. This length increases the power that can be transferred to the ball, but it also makes it less likely that the ball will meet the the quarter-sized sweet spot in the middle of the club face. When an off-center hit occurs, the head of the club tends to twist, pointing the face in an unintended direction, and sending the ball the wrong way.
A golf club designer has to balance a number of factors. A heavy club head best resists twisting and so suffers the least from a less-than-perfect swing. On the other hand, a golfer can generally swing a club with a lighter head at a greater speed, which generates more energy to be transferred to the ball and so sends the ball a greater distance. Over the past 100 or so years, golf club designers have attempted to strike a balance between light and heavy clubs. The large head of a driver and the combination of metals like steel, titanium and bronze that go into various drivers, are attempts to balance stability and light weight. The driver head shape allows designers to move the weight in the head to points that enhance stability (points that are different for each brand of club, and provide one of the differences touted by manufacturers when claiming superiority for their clubs). The driver head shape also allows the head to glide over grass and ground rather than digging into the turf.
Irons
Irons are designed for a greater variety of shots than woods. Where woods tend to be optimal for long to very long shots, the shots made using irons range from 200 yards or more, in the case of 2 irons, down to 40 yards or less in the case of the various wedges. Club designers must cope with the same issues in irons as in woods, but their shorter shafts and the less exaggerated swings with which they are used have led to different solutions for different types of players.
Only 25 years ago, most companies' irons were very similar -- a blade-shaped head with most of the weight concentrated low and in the center of the club. This design gave an additional emphasis to shots in which the ball was hit with the club's sweet spot. The heads of these clubs were steel, and usually shaped by forging -- hammering hot metal under great pressure. When a golfer hit the ball off-center, there was very little in the club's design to prevent it from twisting and delivering a disappointing shot.
In the last 25 years, designers have developed clubs that have approximately the same weight as the older clubs but have it distributed around the perimeter of the club, so that the head is far more resistant to off-center twisting and therefore far more forgiving of golf swings that are off line by a few millimeters. In addition, modern metal alloys have allowed for larger iron heads, which increases the size of the "sweet spot," thereby increasing the possibility of good results with a less-than-perfect swing.
If you look in the golf bag of a PGA Tour player, you'll probably see the same sort of forged blade-style irons you would have seen 25 years ago. That's because their concentration of weight behind the sweet spot make the most of a professional's very consistent, very accurate swing. Recreational golfers, on the other hand, have embraced the perimeter-weighted iron for the good results they get even with less consistent swings.
Putters
Putters have a relatively simple job: to strike the golf ball with a face perpendicular to the path of a gentle swing and cause the ball to roll along the ground until it falls into a hole. Twisting is still a concern with off-center hits, but a putter is designed to transfer far less energy to the ball than either irons or woods. It's interesting, then, to note the incredible array of shapes taken by the heads of putters -- blocks, blades, short, long, thick, thin, etc., and the various patterns of lines found on the faces. So why is there such variation in a club designed for such a simple task? Because the mechanical simplicity of putting places most of the pressure on the golfer's mental processes, where there is room for far more variation than in any golf swing.
No comments:
Post a Comment